chapter twenty-nine
Transdimensional Dreadnought Phoenix
Transverse, non-congruent
Susan crawled through the utility duct on her hands and knees, her grenade launcher retracted against her back, rifle and incinerator docked along her hips. Noxon crawled after her atop the bed of cables, his bulkier Type-92 frame struggling to squirm through the narrow space.
She reached a raceway junction. Half the cables continued straight across the gap, while some bent up or down to follow the cramped shaft. She pulled herself across the gap then glanced back over her shoulder.
Noxon shoved a cable bundle aside, grabbed her outstretched hand, and she helped haul him over. She shuffled aside, and he squeezed into the space she made. He placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke in closed-circuit chat. They hadn’t used radio since the fight against the Red Knight.
“Is it my imagination,” the old STAND said, “or are these ducts getting narrower?”
“I think it’s your imagination.”
“I should have switched to a newer model when I had the chance.”
Susan resumed their slow trek down the duct.
Internal security measures on the Institute warship lagged behind the density common on SysPol craft, which was one of the reasons the two STANDs had gone undetected for so long. Most of the obstacles they’d faced seemed to have been repurposed: hastily armed industrial synthoids and hastily printed drones. She guessed the Institute hadn’t expected a fight inside the ship, otherwise they would have prepared a larger security force and created a more thorough internal detection grid.
The Red Knights were the odd exception to this, and she wondered why they were even present. Not everything had gone according to the Institute’s master plan, even before SysPol became involved, so perhaps that explained their presence. Could the Red Knights have been left over from an internal conflict? An uprising of sorts that had to be put down by force? Ijiraq, perhaps?
I doubt it matters anymore, she thought.
At least two more Red Knights were on board, hunting for them along with dozens of those skull-like drones. Sticking to the major passages had proven too risky, even with their variskin, but the alternative was a slow, agonizing crawl through the ship’s bowels.
Meanwhile, a battle raged outside; they could feel the great vessel shudder from the occasional impact.
It must be one hell of a fight, she thought, for us to feel it this deep.
Susan shimmied forward underneath an access panel. She turned over onto her back and studied the locking mechanism. Noxon grabbed her ankle, establishing a secure connection.
“There’s an access panel here,” she said. “Want me to check our surroundings? Maybe see if we can get our bearings?”
“Go ahead, but be careful.”
She unlocked the clasps at each corner, eased the panel aside, and peeked her head out.
She had expected another cramped corridor or perhaps a wider space for equipment or supplies. What she actually saw was much, much larger.
The walls of the chamber bent inward to form a huge sphere. Susan found it difficult to judge the distance without her scopes active, but guessed it to be about five hundred meters in diameter. They had found the hollow center of the Institute’s warship.
But the cavernous space wasn’t empty; racks mounted on thick structural beams spanned the chamber from one end to the other, with hundreds of ovoid pods slotted densely into place. A few of the racks closest to her were empty and spaced more widely. Vacant docks for TTVs? That seemed reasonable to her. The sizes looked about right, and the Institute TTVs had launched from somewhere underground. Why not within a mothership?
Then this is a hangar, Susan thought. Sort of like the hollow core of a Directive cruiser. I wonder if there are any other similarities.
“We’re in a hangar of some kind.” She shared her viewpoint through their link and angled her cameras around. “I’m not sure what these pods are, but we don’t have the firepower to damage more than a handful.”
She turned around fully, ending up back on her knees. A nearby rise in the chamber wall blocked her view.
“Sir, you see that?”
“The dome, you mean?”
“Look at its shape! I think the wall bulges out to make room for one of the ship’s hot singularity reactors!”
“Then we have our target. Let’s—”
A distant flash of movement amongst the pods caught Susan’s eye, and she ducked back inside the utility channel.
“I may have been spotted, sir.”
“We should move quickly. What do you think is the best way to reach the reactor?”
“Back the way we came, and then down that last shaft. That should get us close to the reactor.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
There wasn’t enough space for Noxon to turn around, so he shuffled back until his legs dangled down the shaft. He let go of the ledge and fell until his frame got stuck partway down. He bashed the raceway aside with a few quick elbows, then squirmed down the rest of the way.
Susan dropped down and easily slipped through the gap. They found themselves in another duct, this one with an access panel along the “floor,” relative to the ship’s acceleration.
Noxon kicked the panel free and dropped into a corridor. He raised his rifle, checked both directions, then signaled with his free hand for her to join him.
Susan landed next to him and drew her weapons.
Noxon pointed down the corridor. Susan hurried forward.
The corridor curved to the right, as if looping around a large object, then branched six ways. Susan took the branch that led toward the center and followed it to the spherical bulk of the hot singularity reactor. It loomed over them, partially wrapped in power lines as thick as a grown man’s waist. A few lines disappeared into the walls and ceiling, but the densest bundle ran through a down shaft half as wide as the reactor itself.
Susan ran up to the edge of the walkway and followed the bundle to its destination several floors below. Noxon joined her, and she placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Sir, look!” She pointed down the shaft. “This isn’t just any reactor. This one powers the impeller! I can see the base of the spike exposed at the bottom!”
“Then let’s not waste another moment. Place your charges on the reactor.”
“But that’s just it, sir. Taking out one reactor will hurt this ship, no doubt about it, but it won’t be fatal. They’ll simply reroute power from another reactor. Even severing the power lines won’t stop them for long. They’ll just run new cables. But if we hit the impeller directly, that could be catastrophic!”
Noxon looked up at the reactor, then glanced down the shaft.
“Very well. We’ll proceed to—”
Susan caught the brief flash of red armor peeking out the side passage. She grabbed Noxon by the shoulders and fired her shoulder boosters. She flattened Noxon to the ground, and the two STANDs skidded across the room. The Red Knight’s shot exploded behind them, and the mech emerged fully into the chamber.
Susan swung around the reactor and boosted back to her feet. She readied her weapons.
“Agent Cantrell,” Noxon said, as calm as the grave. “You will proceed to the impeller spike and plant your charges.”
“But, sir—”
“That’s an order!” his voice erupted like a sudden blaze. “I’ll hold them back myself! Go!”
The Red Knight rounded the reactor.
“Complete the mission!” Noxon shouted, then lit his boosters and charged in.
Susan didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to abandon a comrade to such an impossible fight. But what she wanted and what she needed to do were two separate concepts in her mind, and all her years of training—all her well-honed sense of duty—denied her the right to hesitate.
And so, despite the bitter pain it brought, she leaped over the railing and boosted down the shaft.
* * *
Noxon blinded the Red Knight with a grenade and circled around it, discharging his rifle on full auto. The shots ricocheted off the mech’s chest armor, and he fired his last two grenades into its flank.
The Red Knight staggered back from the explosions, its arm cannons coming around while Noxon circled behind it. He lined up a shot on the Red Knight’s back when the second Red Knight opened fire on him.
“No!”
He ducked underneath the smart munition. It exploded over his head and slammed him into the ground. Yellow warnings lit up in his mind. Malmetal shifted to close around the debris stuck in his back and shoulders. He rolled onto his side and boosted away, sparks scintillating as his armor grated against the floor.
The next shot blew a twisted hole in the ground where he’d fallen.
Noxon lifted into the air, spraying the Red Knights with rifle fire and flame. He tried to keep one of the mechs in the middle, using its bulk as makeshift cover. Another shot whizzed past his arm, and the proximity explosion tore ugly gashes in his side. His incinerator burped one last flame and sputtered into silence.
He knew he needed to buy Cantrell every last second. She wouldn’t last long against two Red Knights.
But neither would he.
A corner of his mind reveled in the desperation of the moment, snarling in defiance, and he threw the flamethrower aside.
He set all his boosters to full power, dropped his shoulder, and exploded toward the mechs. The jarring impact drove the first Red Knight back into the second, and all three of them crunched against the reactor wall.
“Take this!”
He stuck the barrel of his rifle into the Red Knight’s elbow and fired. Bullets ricocheted inside the mech, and the arm fell limp. It swung at Noxon with its free arm, and a mighty crunch threw him to the ground. He skidded to a halt, his right shoulder crushed, the arm twisted into the perfect backscratcher. He snatched up the rail-rifle with his left hand and boosted away.
The two Red Knights untangled themselves from the wall, pursuing him side by side. They raised their main weapons and fired at staggered intervals. Noxon juked left, then right, explosions blasting him from either side. He dodged the worst of the first two, but the third munition struck above his knee and blew his leg clean off. He swerved out of control and face-planted into the floor.
He tried to light his boosters, but only two came on. It was barely enough to clear the next shot, and the blast took his other leg off. He crashed onto his back, vision distorted by cracks in his camera lenses.
He raised his rifle once more and aimed it at the Red Knights, the end of the barrel wavering uncertainly.
The mechs fired first.
Both smart munitions punched into his torso, and twin blasts reduced his combat frame to a shower of hot, flying scrap.
* * *
Susan lobbed a grenade into the security shutter. The flash-crack blew it open, and she dove through the smoke.
Automated barricades and heavy blast doors had morphed into place after she dropped down the shaft, forcing her to take a circuitous route to the spike. She’d burned precious time blasting through them, but she was finally where she needed to be.
She boosted across the bottom of the shaft, the outer shell of the impeller’s exotic mechanisms beneath her feet. Thick trunks of a dozen power cables merged into it, passing through a tight gap in the blast doors above her. She removed one of her demo charges, placed it on the ground where the power lines met the impeller, then boosted to the other side.
She planted the second explosive.
The blast doors above her yawned open. She looked up at the two Red Knights descending toward her. One of them bore the scars of weapons fire across its chest, an arm hanging limp.
They aimed their weapons at her but didn’t open fire.
This was the soft, inner guts of the impeller, after all. It didn’t like being jostled.
Really didn’t like it.
And she was standing right on top of it.
She armed the charges and set a five-second timer.
“See you bastards in hell!”
Susan rocketed up the shaft, zooming past the two Red Knights. They ignored her and dove toward the demolition charges, delicate manipulators unfolding from underneath their forearms.
The timer reached zero, and the shaft turned white.
The shock wave tossed the Red Knights aside like rag dolls and traveled up the shaft as if it were the barrel of a gun. Sudden force slammed Susan upward into the base of the reactor, and damage warnings scrolled across her vision.
Half the cables snapped free, recoiling like a nest of angry snakes. Severed ends spat arcs of high-voltage electricity through the thinning gas of the explosion. A hairline fracture etched a stuttering path from one end to the impeller’s foundation to the other. The fracture worsened, widened, deepened, and the entire spike began to lose cohesion.
The two pieces—one without power and disconnected from its larger sibling—began to slip out of phase from each other. The spike couldn’t exist in two places at once, and the force of this unreality clove it down the entire length. One half slipped further out of phase with the other, and then shattered.
Wavering, glassy chunks floated away from the wounded impeller. Fragments sank into the floor and walls or ghosted through the other half of the impeller.
Side-by-side sections of the ship lost phase with one another, and solid matter began to interpenetrate. The floor warped in on itself. Power cables melded into a vile medusa’s head. One Red Knight sank halfway into the other, all while shimmering fragments sailed up the shaft toward Susan.
She stared in awe and terror at the carnage she’d wrought.
Had the fleet outside damaged the impeller? Softening it up just enough for her to split it in two?
A massive chunk of exotic matter floated up to meet her, and she boosted away from the reactor. The fragment sank through the reactor wall, and the sudden imbalance caused the hot singularity to collapse. Positive and negative mass and energy canceled each other out, and the small surplus erupted in a blinding flash.
The explosion slammed Susan forward—
—straight into a luminous boulder phasing up through the floor.
“Oh, no!”
She sank into the shimmering matter, and then fell away through deck after deck, plummeting through the ship like a free-falling phantasm. Corridors and utility channels and structural beams and the innards of great machines all flashed before her eyes.
She collided with a piece of the hull that possessed a similar phase, and the impact crushed two of her boosters. She spiraled away through a long expanse of metallic armor, and finally dropped into the cold dark of the transverse.
The massive, gunmetal globe of the Institute warship pulled away above her, a shimmering trail bleeding from its broken impeller. It wavered uncertainly for a moment, as if she were glimpsing it through turbulent water, and then it vanished, leaving an expansive cloud of broken decks, reactor parts, and impeller fragments.
Susan floated through the dark void, and a sudden, harsh sense of loneliness gripped her soul. She reached behind and patted the small of her back, and relief flared when she found the chronometric telegraph still attached.
She didn’t know if anyone would be able to hear her. The destruction of an impeller that size and the amount of phasing debris around her would make it difficult for anyone to pick up small bursts of telegraph chronotons. Presuming anyone would take the time to actually look for her. Any nearby ships had more pressing matters, like dealing with the massive Institute warship, wounded though it may be.
The chances of anyone coming to save her were low.
But they weren’t zero.
She opened the telegraph’s menu and composed her call for help: Agent Cantrell in need of emergency pickup. Transdimensional coordinates unknown.
She set the telegraph to repeat automatically.
And then she waited, alone with her thoughts. More alone than she’d ever been in her entire life, separated not only from the people she knew and cared about, but from any sense of place or time.
The transverse surrounded her, a suffocating void with only the briefest flickers of dim, distant light to break the oppressive monotony. She checked her frame’s power reserves, realized she was still operating in a combat-ready state, and quickly switched off all nonessential subsystems.
Long minutes passed, and she wondered how long she’d have to wait, either for rescue, or a lonely death as her power reserves petered out.
It turned out she didn’t have to wait very long.
A TTV flashed into existence ahead of her.
“You okay out there, Susan?” Agent Raibert Kaminski asked over radio.
“Better, now that you’re here! How’d you find me?”
“You can thank your partner. After we saw the impeller break apart from the inside out, Isaac suggested we sweep the debris field for survivors. Seems he had a hunch you might be involved.”
A warm sense of relief spread through her. She should have known Isaac would keep a keen eye open for any signs she’d survived.
“Oh,” Raibert continued, “and Doc had a hand in it, too. I don’t know how, but he somehow managed to pick your signal out from all this noise. Is there anyone else out here with you?”
“As far as I know I’m the only one.”
“All right. We’ll come pick you up, then make one more sweep of the impeller debris before rejoining the fleet. Hang tight.”
The TTV angled toward her, and the bow split open. She slipped inside its maw, and the gentle reintroduction of gravity pulled her to the deck.
“Hurry up and strap in, Susan,” Raibert added as the bow closed shut. “We’re not out of this yet!”
* * *
“Susan’s secured her frame in a cargo rack,” Raibert told Elzbietá, “and Doc hasn’t found any more survivors. Go!”
“Moving out!”
Elzbietá yanked on her omni-throttle and sped toward Phoenix. A few signatures flitted in and out of phase around it while the bulk of the fleet hung back, and the Kleio quickly caught up to the engagement zone.
The fleet had expended the last of its nukes hours ago, and for a while it seemed a foregone conclusion the warship would reach the Admin’s outer wall. But the damage to its impeller changed the situation drastically, and Jonas Shigeki had deployed their suppressors a second time.
“Incoming telegraph from Hammerhead-Prime,” Kleio reported. “Suppressors have proven unable to halt the enemy’s advance. However, Pathfinder squadron reports widespread failures across Phoenix. Weapons fire has dropped in quantity and effectiveness. All ships will advance on the enemy and engage.”
“Oh boy,” Elzbietá said. “This is going to be rough.”
“I’ve redeployed the meta-armor along the bow,” Philo said. “All systems ready for combat.”
“How long until we reach the outer wall?”
“Less than nine minutes.”
“Then let’s do this. Here goes!”
The Kleio surged forward into battle once more, surrounded by twenty-nine other time machines. The fleet phase-locked with Phoenix, materializing around it from every angle, and all hell broke loose. Chronoports and TTVs pounded the warship with everything they had, and return fire belched back at them. The Kleio phased in above Phoenix, and Elzbietá angled their nose down while maintaining their momentum, turning their trajectory into a rough orbit around the warship.
A kinetic slug from a capital driver struck a nearby chronoport, and the impact sent it spinning like a top, one wing torn free.
“Retracing that shot,” Philo said. “Locked. And firing!”
X-rays stabbed into the capital weapon mount, and an explosion plumed upward from Phoenix’s surface. The wounded mount sank beneath the surface armor while a nearby laser pod reoriented on the Kleio.
“Careful!” Philo warned.
“I see it! Here goes!”
Elzbietá juked them to the side as the laser fired. X-rays splashed across the bow, and metamaterial superheated, crisped, and then blackened under the torrential energy.
“Meta-armor compromised.” Philo worked his controls. “Shifting what’s left to provide some bow coverage.”
“Damn,” Elzbietá hissed. “In one shot, too!”
She pulled them around the warship, but the capital laser tracked them, charging up for another strike. It was moments away from firing when a concentrated salvo from two Hammerheads ripped through it.
Elzbietá pulled them in close, whipping around underneath the warship until the impeller came back in view. Or what was left of it. Roughly half the spike remained, split unevenly down the middle.
“There!” she said. “Hit the impeller!”
“Firing!”
Gatlings blazed away, peppering the spike with tiny explosives. Wavering splinters of exotic matter split away with each strike, and the mass driver whumped, breaking off a jagged chunk near the tip.
“Are we having any effect?” Elzbietá asked.
“I can’t tell. Their speed’s holding at twenty-seven kay.”
“Then keep pounding the damn thing!”
The Kleio circled up behind Phoenix, Gatlings chattering.
“Laser recharged,” Philo said. “Firing!”
A lance of x-rays bored into the spike, and more fire poured in from friendlies. X-rays, atomic lasers, and kinetic strikes hammered the impeller from all sides, and another crack raced outward. Philo hit the gash with a mass driver shot, and a lump of exotic matter the size of their TTV cracked off.
Almost all of the Phoenix’s guns had fallen silent, and the fleet clustered around the huge vessel, lacerating it with an unrelenting sleet of concentrated fire. Explosions wracked the surface, and shots began to punch through the armor to tear at its insides. The impeller teetered against the hull, its edges blurring before it shattered in three massive segments, and then those pieces tore themselves apart into ever smaller fragments, spreading into a glassy, glinting cloud of phasing debris.
“Their field’s starting to collapse,” Philo reported. “But not fast enough. I think they have too much dimensional inertia!”
“Then we need to get the suppressors back here!” Elzbietá said. “Quick, Kleio, contact—”
“Too late!” Philo cried. “We’re already there!”
The TTV lurched as it punched through the Admin’s outer wall, along with every other time machine, and reality flashed into existence around Phoenix and the fleet. The wide arc of Earth appeared beneath them, its surface a mix of sun-kissed continents, swirling white clouds, and wide stretches of twinkling nightlife.
The Kleio shuddered, and orange flames burst along the hull as they sped through the upper atmosphere. Elzbietá pulled the nose up, friction flames dancing across the hull.
Phoenix became a great, blazing ball of fire burning across the sky.
The sudden shock of air friction scattered many of the DTI chronoports, forcing them to lose control and fall back. They righted themselves quickly, but not as fast as the Kleio could, thanks to its omnidirectional graviton thrusters.
Phoenix slowed, frictional fires dying down to a billowing shroud of smoke. Metallic glints broke away from its blackened underbelly. The silvery points fell through the air before winking out.
“What’s going on?” Elzbietá asked. “Those don’t look like pieces of the hull breaking off.”
“They’re not,” Philo said. “Phoenix is deploying some sort of pod. Dozens of the things, but I’m losing track of them shortly after they break away. They must have metamaterial shrouds.”
“We need to stop this!”
Elzbietá pulled in close, circling around and below the warship.
“There!” Philo tagged a location along the underbelly. “That opening in the armor! That’s where the pods are coming from.”
“Not for long!”
Elzbietá flew in directly underneath the warship and aimed their main weapons up into its guts. She could see now the dynamic armor had been pulled back around a wide, circular shaft that led to an internal hangar of some sort. The hangar was filled with stacks of pods.
“Take the shot, Philo!”
“Firing!”
Every weapon the TTV had blared up into the Phoenix’s guts, and dozens of pods blew apart, even as more tried to slip out. Philo tracked those, too, gunning them down with the Gatlings, while powerful shots from their bow cannons stabbed up into the warship.
Several pods managed to slip past them. There were too many for the Kleio to stop all of them. But they did stop most while reducing the entire hangar to a twisted concave of ruined metal and fractured pods.
Elzbietá pulled them away, their Gatlings almost dry. More shots from the fleet pounded into Phoenix, and Elzbietá spied a pair of the Admin’s huge conventional warships coming into view over the horizon.
The Institute’s warship wouldn’t last much longer.
But what about the pods that slipped past us? she wondered. Where have they gone, and what are they about to do?